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At Legal Aid, clients often come to us in emergency situations, with little time to collect the information needed to present a case in court. Documents such as rental leases and prior court filings can be extremely important to support testimony from witnesses, but it is sometimes impractical to get them on short notice before a court date.

One tool that can make it easier to send documents is a scanner application for smart phones. Scanner applications do more than simply take a photo of a document. They convert an image of the document into a PDF file without the need for a scanner. The application can straighten an image, adjust its brightness and size, and perform other tasks to create a professional quality document. Examples of these applications include Office Lens, TurboScan, iScan, Genius Scan, and Google Drive. Many of these tools are free, and are available for different types of smart phones.

Communication between lawyers and clients is vital to successfully navigating the legal system. Short deadlines and travel distance can sometimes make communication difficult, but scanner applications can help overcome these complications and make the system work.